For today’s new episode of Selected Novels, we talked to Maya Binyam about Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners. This classic novel of the Windrush generation became a touchstone for Maya when she first read it in college, but she hadn’t reread it until now—and was relieved to encounter once more the enlivening, funny, picaresque book that changed her conception of what literary prose could be. The novel, she contends, could only have been written in creolized English—and we dig into its lyrical sense of style, as well as its aesthetic reconciliation of the storytelling and journalistic impulses, and the existential questions it poses about urban life (and how they helped her realize that Chicago is not an inherently horrible city).
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A programming reminder: the podcast is now hosted on our Substack. Alongside Apple Podcasts and Spotify, you can now find the full archive of Selected Novels and Selected Essays (as well as a few other one-off episodes) here.
Have questions, comments or essay suggestions for us? Send an email to selectednovels@thepointmag.com—we’d love to hear from you.
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